It's not unusual for me to have guys in their late 20s or early 30s in my class. Everyone likes the older guys. Plus, offer to buy beer = instant study group (as long as you can keep those 18-year-olds sober DURING the study sessions).

Sounds a bit off topic, but I thought this tied in interestingly to something I saw on Alton Brown's Good Eats (it's a cooking show).

When movie theaters started to boom in the 1920s, a time of general economic prosperity, the theaters used to rent out space in front of the theaters to sell popcorn. Then, during the depression, the theaters realized they weren't making enough money. They also realized that it's almost free to make their own popcorn, and that you can mark up popcorn by obscene amounts and nobody will say boo. Thus, movie theater concessions were born.

Sometimes it takes an economic downturn to realize that you're getting hosed by renting out space, whether it be on your hard drive, or in front of your movie theater.

Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @03:10AM
from the silencing-naysayers dept.

Today, the Black Mesa Team released an impressive trailer for their remake of Half-Life. The remake is a total-conversion mod for Half-Life 2, bringing the updated graphics and AI of the Source engine to the original game. The team has been dropping hints lately that the project, which began in 2004, is almost done, and the trailer confirms that it will be out in 2009. They also recently announced that they've "dropped Counter-Strike: Source as a requirement for Black Mesa, and from now on, the only thing you'll need to play the mod is a Steam account with any Source engine game installed! Black Mesa is now running completely off of our own content and base Source shared content, and we felt the vastly increased user base more then [sic] justified creating all the extra assets needed to make this switch."

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "In 536 Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that "a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness... and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear." Now palaeoclimatologist Keith Briffa and an international team of collaborators have found the characteristic fingerprint of a volcanic eruption in layers of ice in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, narrowly dated to around 533-536 and the amount of sulphate they found implies that the eruption was even bigger than that of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, perhaps releasing as much as 40% more dust making the event "the most severe volcanic cooling event in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 2,000 years". Some have suggested that consequences of the erpuption were more dramatic than mere crop failure and overcast skies. Around 541, a plague pandemic rampaged from southern Asia to Denmark, wreaking havoc in the Byzantine Empire and possibly killing about 40% of the inhabitants of its capital Constantinople."

Roland Piquepaille writes: "An international team of researchers has developed a novel strategy against HIV. They added two genes to immune cells which 'transformed them into potent weapons that destroy cells infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.' This idea of 'genetically engineering immune cells to redirect their infection-fighting ability toward killing HIV-infected cells could lead to an entirely new approach for combating AIDS.' This research looks promising, but it's only working in labs right now. But read more and please note that this is a very different story from the one you mentioned on March 1, Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV."

Old Breadbutt writes: "Popular music torrent site, OiNK was shut down following a two year criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD)... Looks like all those saved up invites are going to be wasted."

QuietR10t writes: Scott Gilbertson from Wired raises an interesting point: "However, there is one interesting quote in the IFPI's press release. Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI's Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, says in the press release: "OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online." (emphasis mine)

tMav writes: Today, eager music lovers all over the world woke up to discover that the popular BitTorrent tracker OiNK has been shut down. The BBC News is reporting the raid and the site now responds only with the increasingly familiar message:

"This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.

A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's users.

DLa Voie writes: "I received a letter from Administaff yesterday stating my data (SSN and other personally identifiable information) was one of the 159,000 records contained on the unencrypted laptop. The laptop computer, which was reported missing on Oct. 3, contained data that was being compiled "in response to a governmental reporting requirement", according to Administaff. How long will it be before this negligence stops, and what type of action do you suggest when this reoccurring scenario happens?"

James in Chicago writes: NBC as subsidiary of General Electric, is hosting a debate at Drexel University October 30th. They have set arbitrary funding requirements such that they exclude Senator Mike Gravel from the debates. Whether or not you agree with Gravel's politics he has been the most outspoken candidate concerning the war and the military-industrial-complex. GE on the other hand has over 2 billion dollars worth outstanding military contracts. When military contractors such as GE get to decide which political candidates are heard what does that mean for this Democracy?

eldavojohn writes: "A British man was arrested who was allegedly the source of a distribution supply chain for leaking albums & movies to file sharers. He operated OiNK which was by invite only and would post files to be distributed which would then show up hours later further down the supply chain on other file sharing sites. This scheme stretched across many nations and is the result of a two year investigation by the IFPI. They hope that by infiltrating these layers of abstraction to the source, they can stop the early leaking of media."

jagermeister101 writes: Bad news for pirates. Torrent sharing network OiNK has been shutdown by British and Dutch police. A flat belonging to a 24 year old IT worker in England and servers based in Amsterdam were raided.